...For the Love of Fine Words.
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Tuesday, May 8, 2012

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Rating: 4 Stars

Wilkie Collins is
considered by many to be the first author of detective fiction. Trained in the law,
the sleuthing techniques used in his work paved the way for Arthur Conan Doyle’s
Sherlock Holmes. Collins’s 1859 novel, ‘The Woman in White’ is written in the
epistolary style reflecting multiple viewpoints, with some portions seeming
like outright witness statements.

Walter Hartright, a
young art teacher is employed at Limmeridge House by Mr. Fairlie to restore his
art-work and to teach his niece Laura Fairlie, and her half-sister Marian
Halcombe. In no time at all, Walter falls in love with Laura, but takes the
honorable recourse of removing his impecunious self from the scene, so that she
may marry her titled fiancé. Alas, much tragedy lies in wait for Laura, a young
woman exasperatingly incapable of taking any decisions on her own behalf. She
leaves that to the intrepid Marian.

Danger hems in the
sisters from all sides, and the key to the mystery lies with an eerie young
woman whom Walter had met by chance. Damsels in distress; a noble-minded hero
guided by the highest principles; unscrupulous villains; and, a plot with many
twists and turns - the book is a true Victorian pot-boiler.

It is not free of the
maudlin sentimentality that hounds even the best works of this period, and at times betrays
an overwrought imagination that could have been dispensed with. But to the
question does it work – the answer is yes. Collins keeps the threads of the
narrative firmly in his possession, and the work has a contemporary charm in
its sudden quirks of humor, and astute characterization, except in the case of Laura
Fairlie who is presumably the Victorian ideal of a delicate-minded lady. It has
the watermark of the successful mystery – it keeps you engrossed till the last
page.